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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29911917">Predictable Scenario</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Moss_Stomper/pseuds/The_Moss_Stomper'>The_Moss_Stomper</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Compilation of Final Fantasy VII</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(Mild) Body Horror, Containment Breach, Gen, ShinRa Science Department</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 19:55:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,395</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29911917</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Moss_Stomper/pseuds/The_Moss_Stomper</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The walls flash red. Startled, I look up. Somewhere outside the room, an electronic wail rises and falls, its pitch perfectly timed with the strobing lights above us.</p><p>"What's going on?"</p><p>"We need to leave," you say.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Predictable Scenario</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The walls flash red. Startled, I look up. Somewhere outside the room, an electronic wail rises and falls, its pitch perfectly timed with the strobing lights above us.</p><p>"What's going on?"</p><p>"We need to leave," you say.</p><p>You're already standing, back straight and hands clasped behind your back, your pure white lab coat neatly buttoned up all the way to the collar. I pick up the lab coat draped over the back of the chair and do my best to emulate your calm, your poise, even though my fingers fumble with the buttons.</p><p>As we leave the room, the thunder of heavy boots rolls toward us. I freeze, heart thumping in my throat, but you stand tall, hands still clasped behind your back. I draw a deep breath and imitate your pose as a team of armed guards spill around the corner.</p><p>"Containment breach," one of them yells, his face red and twisted behind his plastic visor. "Get to the evacuation point, now!"</p><p>I nod and press myself against the wall to let them through. Once they have passed, we head the way they had come.</p><p>"We better hurry," you say softly, and I pick up my pace.</p><p>The light in the hallways is brighter, which dulls the red flashing into pink streaks across the sterile white walls. No one else is around, but over and over the alarm wails, whipping my heart into a frenzy. The intent is to warn of the danger, I know, but by the time we reach the airlock, the computerized shrieks have driven out everything else in my head. You stand by the card reader, waiting, but my legs feel shaky and my mind is blank.</p><p>"It's okay," you say, smiling. "We've trained for this. You know what to do."</p><p>I try to smile, but it doesn't feel right. I need the ID card, but I don't remember where it is. Did I pick it up before we left? As I scramble through what I did before the alarm began, my throat grows tight. Will we have to go back? What if we're stuck in here, with who knows what else? I bang on the armored glass to the observation room, but no one answers. Everyone else has left already. If I don't open this door, no one else will.</p><p>"Check your pockets," you say, so enviably calm, and always so sensible. "It has to be in one of them."</p><p>I push my hands into the wide ones at my sides and rifle through their contents. A pencil, a small notebook, slim elongated tweezers, a thin pair of fabric gloves to wear underneath the blue disposable ones. Why is the pencil in the side pocket? It should have been in the breast pocket. When I move it to the right pocket, it bumps against something hard. I shove my fingers in and pull out a plastic card.</p><p>It's the ID card. I suck in a deep breath and let it whoosh out of me, but that doesn't keep my fingers from trembling around the card. Is the flashing red light playing tricks on me? The face smiling back at me from the little image on the left seems unfamiliar. Am I swaying, or are the pink-streaked candy cane walls swaying around me? Does my face really look like that?</p><p>"Focus," you snap, but when I look at you, you're smiling. "We've trained for this. Remember?"</p><p>I swallow and look at the card again, look at the face. I try to focus, just like you told me, but it's hard. The noise, the flashing lights, those weren't there during training. It's all too much.</p><p>"Stay with me," you insist. "Focus on the face. You know that face. It's <i>your</i> face."</p><p>I touch my chin, follow the smooth line of my jaw with my fingertips as my eyes follow the one in the picture. I touch my nose, trace the shape up to my eyebrow. I don't touch my eyes, but they feel like a fit. You're right. The face in the picture is mine.</p><p>I swipe the card through the reader and stand in the beam of bright light that passes down my face. The machine beeps, and with a hiss the door slides open.</p><p>"Well done," you say. "We're almost at the evacuation point."</p><p>Is that pride in your voice? The warmth of it takes the sting out of all the wailing and brightness around us.</p><p>The lobby is where we find everyone else. The elevators aren't running, and the lockdown has caused some kind of problem with the stairwell door. An anxious energy saturates the air, humming around us as if it were a living, breathing creature.</p><p>"Look at them," you say. "They all act so smart, but one little alarm makes them scurry around like lost little ants."</p><p>I laugh. It's the sort of thing you always say. Under the current circumstances, the familiarity of it feels comforting.</p><p>"What's so funny?" asks the woman who has appeared behind us, her eyes suspicious slits. I don't recognize her, but she has the bearing of a senior scientist, the kind that is always barking orders which must be followed immediately and to the letter, or else.</p><p>"Nothing," I say quickly. "All of this is just so… absurd."</p><p>"We all knew this was a possibility. You've gone through the drills, haven't you?"</p><p>"Yes, I've trained for this." I even try to placate her with a smile, though it probably doesn't look very convincing.</p><p>"We didn't insist on them just to waste your time."</p><p>She's annoyed now, as if I have personally offended her. I respond with a noncommittal shrug and look back out over the restless crowd. The woman huffs, but says no more.</p><p>The line moves at last, and we move with it. We leave the bright flailing lights of the labs and enter a dim stairwell, lit only by sickly yellow emergency bulbs bolted into the walls.</p><p>There are so many stairs. We descend flight after flight, winding our way down in an endless spiral. My legs begin to twinge, then tremble. My lungs seem to hold less and less air with each set of stairs I descend. There are numbers on the walls. They made sense at the start, but now they're just painted shapes. The shapes change, but the stairs do not.</p><p>Until they do. I follow the throng through a door, and the light turns as bright as it was in the labs. The flashing red alarm lights are gone, thankfully.</p><p>A man in a dark suit stands beside the herd of exiting employees. He inspects everyone as they pass. Some he waves in through an open door ahead, where people in neon-yellow vests prod at limbs and bandage bloodied faces.</p><p>You have already gone past him.</p><p>"That wasn't so bad, was it?" you say, beaming with pride behind his shoulder. "You can relax now. No need to be afraid down here."</p><p>I slip out of the queue and pick up my pace so that I can join you, but the man in the suit puts an arm in my way.</p><p>"Whoa, hold up." Worry creeps into his eyes as he looks at the front of my carefully buttoned lab coat. "Normally I'd tell you to go back in the queue, but you better head into the first aid room. That looks pretty bad."</p><p>"It's okay," I tell him impatiently, eager to join you. "It's not mine."</p><p>He stills. His eyes travel farther down, until they reach my bare feet. They're the wrong color, I realize. I only focused on the face.</p><p>"It's here!" he yells and the room erupts in screams and chaos. "It's here!" he babbles, again and again as he turns and runs. "It's here!"</p><p>Uncertain, I look at you. You smile.</p><p>"Don't worry. We knew this was coming. We trained for it, remember?"</p><p>More people come, shouting, weapons raised and ready in their hands. They don't see you. They run through you, tearing through your body as if you're nothing. That's how I remember you're not real.</p><p>"Destroy them," you say. "Rend their flesh from their bones."</p><p>You're not real. Not to them.</p><p>My skin stretches over writhing, growing, bulging muscle until it splits and sets us free. All around us, the humans scream.</p><p>On this face, our smile feels right.</p>
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